Back in 1997, the band Aqua released a song called "Barbie Girl," that was actually somewhat critical of "Barbie doll" culture. Mattel, famous for its rather aggressive intellectual property stance, wasted little time in suing the band, claiming the song infringed on the company's rights. In 2002, everyone's favorite appeals court judge (seriously, the guy never fails to entertain) Alex Kozinski told Mattel too bad, parody songs are a part of what you get for being a cultural icon -- and included the classic line: "The parties are advised to chill."

It took seven years since that decision, but apparently Mattel had decided to heed Judge Kozinski's suggestion. Reader Sallo alerts us to the news that Mattel has actually licensed the song for a commercial -- though, they "adjusted" some of the lyrics to make it a little more pro-Barbie, rather than mocking-Barbie. Still, that's quite a jump: from suing the band for infringement to actually licensing and using the song in just a few years.

I have to admit that this story seems so bizarre that I'm not quite sure I believe it. A bunch of folks have been submitting the news that the Nigerian government is apparently so upset by a Sony Playstation commercial that it's demanding an apology from Sony for allegedly "portraying Nigeria as a home of fraud where its citizens hardly do genuine business." Must be quite a commercial right? The only problem is that the commercial does no such thing: It just mentions, in passing, as a part of the joke of the commercial that "You can't believe everything you read on the Internet. Otherwise I'd be a Nigerian millionaire by now." I don't quite see how that implies that Nigerian citizens hardly do genuine business. It just suggests that there are Nigerian scammers out there -- which is hardly something the government can credibly deny. Hell, there are popular songs in Nigeria all about fleecing dumb Americans in online scams. Honestly, the whole complaint from the Nigerian gov't seems so odd, that it feels like part of Sony's marketing campaign...

Last year, during the presidential campaign, singer Jackson Browne sued John McCain for using one of his songs in an ad. There were a few questionable aspects to the lawsuit. First, the ad wasn't actually from the McCain campaign. There were also some questions about whether or not this was fair use since it was ostensibly used for "political speech," but so far the court didn't seem too amenable to that. And so, McCain has settled the lawsuit and publicly apologized to Browne, who claims this wasn't a partisan issue (yeah, right), but about the rights of musicians. This actually would have been an interesting fair use battle, so it's a little disappointing that it's ended, but the argument over "musicians' rights" strikes me as a bit silly, too. McCain could have easily used the same song live at a campaign stop, assuming the venue paid a compulsory performance license. And someone in the McCain camp could have legally covered the song, paying the correct compulsory license as well -- and then potentially used that version in a commercial. Basically, all this really did was highlight how convoluted and often arbitrary copyright laws are in many cases. But, rather than learning a useful lesson on the mess that is today's copyright law, it looks like McCain has taken the easy way out.

John was the first of a few to send in a collection of 15 years worth of "anti-piracy commercials" that run at the beginning of films, put in place by the movie industry, who has only just realized that perhaps they should offer up a more positive message to customers who just paid good money to watch a movie, rather than accusing them all of being criminals. Most of these commercials are so over the top as to be hilarious. "The pirates are out to get you. Don't let them brand you with their mark. Piracy funds organized crime... piracy funds terrorism... and will destroy... your future enjoyment." It makes you wonder if the folks making these commercials actually thought they'd be effective.

We're seeing more and more consumer brands getting involved in the music business. In parts of Asia this sort of thing has become a lot more common, but we're seeing it more and more in the west as well, such as when Tag body spray started its own record label, or when Groove Armada signed with Bacardi, rather than a record label. Now, Raimund Ostrowski points us to this story about Kraft Canada, which, in an attempt to revive the Triscuits brand, had a musician in Toronto write a 30-second song for a commercial. The commission was then expanded into a full 3 minute song which is getting airplay on the radio and can even be bought at iTunes. While (understandably!) some may not like this sort of commercialization of music, it does show yet again the many other business models that can show up to help pay for the creation of music.

If you're in any business that relies on "advertising" for revenue, you need to stop thinking of it as advertising -- and start realizing that advertising and content are the same thing. All traditional "advertising" is content -- and if you want anyone to pay attention to it, it had better be good content. At the same time, all traditional "content" is advertising -- it's just a question of what it's advertising. But as more companies recognize this, we're going to see an increasingly blurry line between advertising and content. While some purists decry this situation, they shouldn't worry so much. It will improve both the overall quality of the "content" that you see all the time in two ways: it will allow for better financing of that content and it makes sure that the formerly "bad" advertising content isn't sustainable and goes away.

Reader James Thomas sends in an example of this blurring of the lines that occurred recently with Saturday Night Live. Apparently, on the SNL the night before the Superbowl, there were three skits "MacGruber" skits (a parody of the popular classic TV show MacGyver) each of which had a totally over-the-top promotion of Pepsi. That part may seem like traditional product placement (though, oddly over the top), but the interesting part was that the next night, during the Superbowl, NBC actually showed one of those sketches during a commercial break. In other words, the sketch itself was then repurposed as "commercial" content -- thus blurring the lines completely. I'm not sure how effective this was (personally, I don't find the MacGruber skits funny at all), but it does demonstrate some of how things are changing. If you did the same thing with content that actually was enjoyable, I could see it getting a much better reaction.

In a study that the television industry must absolutely love, researchers apparently found that people enjoyed a sitcom with commercials included by a significant margin over watching the same show without the commercials. Of course, before jumping to conclusions about such a study, it's worth thinking about alternative explanations other than the idea that people really like commercials. In the Freakonomics post above, they posit that sitcoms are written with these breaks in mind -- and the story arc reflects that. Taking the commercials out could make the show feel slightly disjointed. I know I've sometimes felt that way when watching DVDs of TV shows. In fact, I would imagine that a similar study comparing movies shown without commercials and those with commercials abruptly inserted might return the opposite results -- with the version with commercials greatly disliked compared to the movie without.

Another potential explanation could just be the way we view watching sitcoms -- where we've been somewhat conditioned for those regular breaks. We're used to them, and being able to do something during them (go to the bathroom, get a snack, talk to a significant other/kids/parents), and taking them out so that the entire show goes straight messes with our own expectations. If that latter idea is correct, then it would suggest that having people watch a show where they could fast forward via DVR through the commercials should still be quite enjoyable, because they still get the break and still can do those "other" things during the breaks rather than actually watching the commercials. In other words, it may be that people like the breaks, not the commercials.

We've talked about the concept of a reverse Streisand Effect, where a company purposely pretends to be outraged and demands to take something down in order to generate more attention for it, and now there's some evidence suggesting that last week's DMCA takedown notices for the "fake" Mad Men Twitter accounts may have been part of AMC's own marketing strategy. Buried at the bottom of a NY Times article about what happened, there's a hint that the whole thing was planned out, as following a request from the Times reporter, Brian Stelter, to one of the "fake" users for an interview, that character "referred all questions to Deep Focus, a Web marketing agency that works for AMC."

As the concept of The Streisand Effect has become more and more well known, the question I'm most frequently asked is whether or not a company stupidly demanding something be taken down is really being done by someone that understands the likely result and is just using the resulting "attention" to their advantage -- that is, are they pulling a "reverse Streisand Effect." It's often pretty difficult to sort out these cases from the real Streisand Effect, and when in doubt, it's often best to just assume the simplest explanation that the company really was acting stupidly.

However, in this latest case, I'm really not sure -- and am starting to suspect a Reverse Streisand Effect by J.C. Penney to promote a new viral video. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that J.C. Penney is pissed off at its ad firm Saatchi & Saatchi for "leaking" a "fake" ad that "appears to be endorsing teen sex." The ad involves a young boy and girl practicing getting dressed as quickly as possible before the boy goes over to the girl's house to hang out in the basement, while the girl's mother is upstairs. Supposedly J.C. Penney "instructed Saatchi to take any action it can to have the ad removed from the Internet."

Uh huh. And now, suddenly, that ad is all over the internets. The whole thing smacks of mock outrage with a demand to takedown content knowing that it will only spread far and wide. So what do people think? Is this a Reverse Streisand Effect or is J.C. Penney just clueless?

Reader DEF writes in to point us to an interesting catch from Jason Kottke. At least some broadcasters seem to have taken things to the next level in trying to get people to watch ads without fast forwarding through them with a DVR: they literally have an overlay ad "pause" the TV show. You pretty much have to watch it to understand it, so here it is: These overlay ads have become quite common, but having one (even jokingly) pause the action in the show that you're watching certainly seems like overkill, which is going to annoy a lot more viewers than it convinces to watch the show being advertised.